A Cruel Season for Dying

by Harker Moore

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

In this chilling series debut, Japanese-American Detective James Sakura must match wits with one of the most brutal killers ever to stalk the streets of New York. Bodies like desecrated fallen angels are discovered posed nude with white wings that jut from slits cut into their shoulders. Understanding the shocking fantasy underlying these ritual executions is the key to catching the killer. When an eight-year-old girl become's the monster's next victim, renowned NYPD homicide detective Lt. James Sakura must use all of his skills and every instinct he has to see into the heart of a murderer who believes he is waging a war against God. As time runs out and the killer's targets become those closest to Sakura, he must risk everything to face this madman alone.

Release date: September 26, 2009

Publisher: Mysterious Press

Print pages: 346

Sample

 


The man’s ear, an inch above the chest, listened for the silence. No breath. No beat of heart. His mouth longed to suck up
the brilliant light now seeping from the pores. Passing from his too human vision. A firefly pinched between the fingers of
God.


There was a reverence in the manner in which he cleansed the body. And a meticulousness—depositing the soiled toweling and
alcohol wipes into the garbage bag he’d packed. Rolling and safeguarding the Visqueen that had lain beneath the body.


Now he straddled the waist, pulling the torso up toward him, angling the pale shoulder into his chest. In death there was
a kind of clumsy resistance that made his work difficult, though not unmanageable. Carefully he rotated the torso farther
to the side so that hips and legs remained parallel, the head in profile.


The scalpel slipped easily into flesh as though through softening butter. There was no blood. The time of bleeding had passed.
He inserted his latexed fingers into the deep pocket he’d made, severing more cleanly skin from muscle. The wound was precisely
under the shelter of shoulder blade.


Twisting the body to the opposite side, he made an identical incision. He bent the torso forward, head to knees, and slowly
inserted the sharp projections of cartilage into the open slits, careful not to damage the tissue. Cradling the juncture of
flesh and feather, he released the body back, flat against the bed. Arranged the arms and hands.


He got up from the bed and retrieved the camera, loading a fresh roll of film. Through the Nocta’s lens the body seemed satisfyingly
less human. He snapped the first photograph. The split-second illumination from the flash burned the white skin whiter, made
the dark recesses of the body blacker. He focused on a crevice, the point
where armpit fit chest. Click. Then down the long thin line of shadow tucked from groin to ankle. Click.

He danced at the foot of the bed, moving from one side to the other. Clicking, clicking in rapid-fire succession, shots from
a gun, the artificial explosions from his camera mimicking the natural explosions of dry lightning jumping through the uncurtained
window. Big light. Little light. The whole of the room emitting a kind of cosmic warning signal.





In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. Driving through dark streets to the scene of murder, Detective Lieutenant James Sakura repeated the words to himself, an
important reminder of weakness as well as virtue.


If not for his special FBI training, he would still be home in bed lying next to Hanae. But on Friday evening he’d been called
to the apartment of Luis Carrera, a dancer with the Metropolitan Ballet, who’d been found in circumstances that suggested
more than an ordinary murder. Now, less than seventy-two hours later, a second victim had turned up over an art gallery in
the East Village. The investigation had been officially transferred from the precincts to his Special Homicide Unit.


At three thirty-seven on a Monday morning, there was relatively little traffic on the Bowery. Sakura raced through intersections,
running lights like beads collected on string. When he turned off on St. Marks, homicide and radio cars were already jamming
the street. He pulled his own car halfway onto the sidewalk and got out.


The month had been colder and wetter than was normal for October, and tonight’s rain waited in an indeterminate sky that seemed
to feed on light. Despite the damp chilliness, a collection of street people from the nearby park had gathered at the lines
of yellow tape. One of the patrolmen, canvassing for witnesses in the crowd, spotted Sakura and walked over.


“Are you first officer?” Sakura flashed his gold detective’s shield.

“No, sir. Frank Kramer’s first. He’s inside.”


Sakura felt relief. Kramer was a good cop, a twenty-year veteran who knew how to protect a crime scene.


Inside the gallery detectives from the local precinct stood talking to the chief of detectives. Lincoln McCauley’s presence
at the murder scene was an indication of the importance that was being attached to the case. Sakura waited as McCauley detached
himself from the group and walked over.


“You made good time.” The chief of detectives reached into his pocket for the case that held his cigars. “Crime Scene’s still
photographing the bedroom.”


“Have my people been called?”

“On their way.” McCauley parked an unlit cigar securely in his teeth. Put the case back inside his jacket. “Dr. Linsky’s been
notified too.”


Sakura nodded. Linsky had been the medical examiner at the murder scene on Friday. Calling him tonight would insure continuity.

“Have you been upstairs?” he asked McCauley.

“Yeah, Jimmy. I’ve seen worse. But never anything like this.”

Sakura understood. Certain things weren’t measured in blood.



In the bedroom the smell of dead incense was a cloud existing at eye level. It crawled into Sakura’s throat, recalling the
death scene on Friday, feeding his awareness of what waited for him on the bed. He fought off the image. This room and what
it contained had to stand apart. Later, when he could reconstruct every detail in his mind, then the two murder scenes could
be compared. By then, anything that was different should shout at him as loudly as that which seemed the same.


The room, apart from the bed, appeared to be, if anything, too normal, without even the usual clutter of cast-off clothes.
There was no sign of a struggle. A collection of clay figures stood undisturbed on a shelf. Canvases on the walls hung straight.
There was no blood spatter on the rugs or wooden floor. Not a piece of furniture seemed to be out of place.


Sakura turned to the bed. It, too, was neat, seemingly undisturbed by the nude body that lay on top. There was no illusion
of sleeping. The man on the bed was dead, with the overwhelming sense of flesh
vacated. The arms were arranged, hands crossed over genitals tucked between the legs. The blue eyes, half open, fixed in an
expression that Sakura had observed many times. Of course was what the eyes seemed to say, as if dying brought the solution to some very simple riddle.


The spent sweet smell of incense was stronger near the bed, concentrated in the charcoal letters scrawled across the wall.
The same ashy residue stood out darkly on the victim’s chest in a pattern of roughly concentric circles, with other lines
coming down.


Sakura moved closer. The bedspread beneath the body was a gray, heavy silk. Against its dull luster, the small blood pools
forming beneath the shoulders were nearly invisible. Leaking from incisions cut into the victim’s back, the stains were only
apparent because he’d known they would be there, overshadowed though they were by the large white wings that stretched across
the pillows.


He stared at what had once been human on the bed. For some detectives, the motive in finding the killer was a kind of sanctioned
revenge, and Sakura knew veterans who spoke sentimentally of victims in forgotten files who still cried out for justice. For
him, it was simpler. Murder, the most heinous of crimes, was the most disruptive of social order. To restore balance, one
must find and punish the killer.


Looking at the winged corpse, the indecipherable writing, he suddenly understood what it was about these crime scenes that
most unnerved him, what had kept him awake at Hanae’s side each night since the first murder. It was not doubt that he could
do the job, but a much more primal fear. In the undisturbed room, in the weird and careful ritual, lay a precise if bizarre
logic, the signature of a mind that, in its own twisted way, craved order as much as his own.




The living area had the same studied spareness as the bedroom. Artwork dominated. A few large canvases, mostly abstract, arranged
on pale glazed walls—collections of small ancient-looking objects on glass and wrought iron tables. The Crime Scene Unit had
begun their work in the rest of the upstairs apartment, and fingerprint powder like drifting volcanic ash lay everywhere on
the living room’s hard surfaces. A single sooty shoe print marred the bleached wool carpet, like an artifact or an omen.



Sakura stood inside the doorway observing the man on the sofa. Jerry Greenberg was, according to Kramer’s report, the victim’s
business partner and lover. He sat hunched forward on the gray leather cushions in a classic pose of mourning, elbows on knees,
the heels of his palms pressed hard against his eyelids. He wore jeans and a turtleneck sweater, which showed above the collar
of the outdoor jacket he had not taken time to remove. He did not seem aware of the heat in the apartment or that anyone had
entered the room. Sakura walked over.


“Mr. Greenberg …”

An indistinguishable noise, a simultaneous sucking in of breath and grief, shuddered in the fabric of the jacket as Greenberg
pulled himself up, his blond head thrown into relief against the abstract painting behind him. He was thinner than Sakura
had first imagined, and the vague slackness of sudden shock made his face appear older than the thirty-six listed in Kramer’s
report. The pale eyes seemed unnaturally large, as if he had to concentrate to keep them open.


“I’m Lieutenant Sakura, Mr. Greenberg,” he introduced himself. “I’m sorry for your loss, but there are questions I have to
ask.”


Greenberg swallowed once, nodded.

“As I understand it,” Sakura began, “you’ve been away for the last few days. You arrived here from the airport around one
forty-five this morning.”


“Yes, I’ve been on a buying trip. I was supposed to fly home tomorrow.” Greenberg’s voice was unexpectedly deep and resonant.
It made his simplest statement sound important. “But I finished up early and managed to get a flight….” The words trailed
off.


“What happened when you got here?”

“I came straight up to the bedroom.”

“The downstairs door was locked as usual?”

“Yes.”

Sakura nodded. As with the Carrera apartment, there had been no sign of forced entry. “So you came upstairs, and you saw Mr.
Milne,” he prompted.


“Yes,” Greenberg said again, “but I couldn’t make sense of it. I mean, I didn’t even know it was David at first. It wouldn’t
register…. Then I just knew he was dead.”



“Do you have any idea who might have done this?”


Greenberg shook his head. He was no longer looking at Sakura.

“Could you have done it?”

The gray eyes flashed upward, indignation penetrating the grief. “What kind of question is that?”

“Direct.” Sakura didn’t smile.

“I loved David.”

“That doesn’t disqualify you, Mr. Greenberg.”

Greenberg had pushed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Now one of them came out. “This does.” He held up a boarding
pass.


Sakura took it, read the time and flight number. “May I keep it?”

“Of course … check it out.” Greenberg’s voice had developed an undertow of belligerence.

Sakura did not react, slipping the boarding pass into his pocket. “Perhaps Mr. Milne invited someone up here this evening,”
he said.


Greenberg’s eyes flashed again, but his answer was calm. “David and I were faithful to each other.”

“But you had friends?”

“A lot of them. Everyone loved David.” There was no irony in the statement.

Sakura held the man’s eyes. “Were you or Mr. Milne, or any of these friends, into any kind of religious or ritualistic … activity?
Something that could get out of hand?”


Greenberg didn’t flinch. “I know no one who could have done this.”


Sakura let it drop. “We’ll want a list of those friends,” he said, “as well as lists of your artists and clients…. You get
a lot of traffic in the gallery?”


“Yes.” For the first time Greenberg nearly smiled. “David was a sculptor,” he said. “The problem was he had rheumatoid arthritis.
He started the gallery when he couldn’t continue to work. He liked finding new artists and helping them. Even when our people
made it uptown, a lot of them would come back here and do shows for us.”


Sakura listened, letting him finish. “I think you would have to agree,” he said, “that there is a certain artistic element
to what happened in that bedroom. I ask you again. Can you think of anyone who might have done this to Mr. Milne?”



“No.” Greenberg was shaking his head violently. “And I find it disgusting that you could call what I saw in there … artistic.”


Sakura watched him. There was a suggestion of performance in all Greenberg’s reactions. The man was very self-aware. It did
not follow, however, that the emotions had to be anything less than genuine.


He tried another tack. “Does the name Luis Carrera mean anything to you?”

“No,” Greenberg said, looking up again. “Should it?”

Sakura did not answer. The truth was, he’d been hoping for some easy connection between David Milne and Friday night’s victim,
who’d also been homosexual, but Greenberg’s denial seemed real. And with no personal link between the gallery owner and the
dancer, it seemed more probable that the killer was targeting gay men at random.


“It’s important,” he said finally, “that you don’t talk to anyone about the details of Mr. Milne’s death. Especially anyone
from the media.”


Greenberg nodded.

“One of my people will drive you to headquarters for a formal statement. You can wait here till we finish; then get whatever
you need. The building will have to be sealed for a few days.”


Greenberg stared, and Sakura could read in the man’s face exactly what he was thinking. That a few days would do nothing to
change the enormity of what had happened.


“I’ll want to speak with you again,” he said, “so make sure we know where you can be reached. If anything occurs to you before
then”— he pulled a card from the inside pocket of his jacket—“this has my number. And don’t forget what I said about talking
to anyone about the details of what happened here tonight. That would damage our chances of finding Mr. Milne’s killer, and
you could be charged with obstruction of justice for interference in a criminal investigation.”


Greenberg’s eyes had gone blank again. He took the card without looking. Kept it in his fingers.

At the door Sakura turned back. The man had not changed position. His stricken face, made paler by distance, seemed frozen
and flat, floating like an icon on the painted surface behind him.





Beneath the corner of Thirtieth Street and First Avenue was the realm of the dead, the basement morgue that handled Manhattan’s
homicides. Colder and damper than the outdoor October, the morgue was a fluorescent-lit underworld where toe-tagged bodies
waited like hitchhikers along the steel-lockered corridors for attendants who would wheel them into the cutting room. Fortunately
for Sakura, the hierarchies of city bureaucracy reached even beyond the grave. Bodies with clout moved to the head of the
line.


Still with a weekend between the two murders, Sakura had yet to receive even the most basic toxicological or lab reports.
And Saturday’s autopsy on Luis Carrera had failed to establish a cause of death. Earlier at the Milne apartment, he had tried
to question Linsky, but the medical examiner had remained determinedly closemouthed, deferring any discussion of his findings
to this morning’s autopsy on the gallery owner.


The procedure had been quickly scheduled, and Linsky, as was his custom, had shunned the protective “bunny suit” for more
traditional scrubs and apron. The son of Russian émigrés, the medical examiner possessed the preciseness of an old-world technician.
It was not unusual for the apron to remain virtually spotless throughout the most involved procedure. A starched white lab
coat would replace it as Linsky exited the swinging metal doors.


The cutting room was silent except for the shuffling of the attendant and Linsky’s monotonous droning as he talked through
his external examination for the overhead mike. Some medical examiners played taped background music on the theory that sound
helped to dampen the brain’s response to odor. Linsky took no such mercy. A detective was present to preserve the evidential
chain. The smell was part of the job. For the moment Milne’s body remained unopened. It lay facedown on the stainless table,
the two shoulder wounds like butcher cuts in tallow.


“… A pair of wounds are present on the posterior chest wall, parallel to the spine and deeply incised into the underlying
skeletal muscle.” Linsky continued to speak for the microphone. “The incisions are approximately five to six centimeters in
length. Margins are sharp and even, suggestive of a small knife or a scalpel-like instrument. Lack of
bleeding into adjacent tissue indicates the injuries were made postmortem. Bruising about the mouth and around the ankles
and wrists is consistent with the use of duct tape.


“You seem to have a question, Lieutenant Sakura?” The M.E. had cut the mike and was looking at him through the plastic visor
shield.


“I was wondering about the fingernails,” Sakura said.

“The lab work isn’t in yet for Carrera. But I saw no obvious skin fragments beneath his nails or Mr. Milne’s here … if that’s
what you’re asking.”


“You said that the bruising was consistent with the victims struggling after they were bound?”


“Yes … after.” Linsky’s voice betrayed a bit of impatience. “Otherwise, we’d expect to see more bruising or abrasions. On
the hands for instance.”


“That’s what puzzles me,” Sakura said. “Why didn’t they struggle before he taped them? Why just let him do it?”

The medical examiner was notoriously reluctant to speculate. A moment passed while he appeared to weigh the worth of the question.
“Perhaps these were bondage situations that turned into something else,” he said finally. “Or given that these victims were
both relatively small men, it’s possible they felt sufficiently threatened physically that they just didn’t fight…. I don’t
know, Lieutenant.”


“Neither do I,” Sakura admitted.

He watched as the attendant helped Linsky turn the body. Faceup again on the table, David Milne was suddenly real, the body
somehow more human than it had appeared last night in the bedroom. Sakura felt an odd pang of impersonal guilt, as if the
indecency of the forensic procedure and his own silent witness could take as much from the dead man as the killer.


Milne was small, with that adolescent boniness that Sakura associated with some gay men. His chest was pale and hairless.
The killer’s charcoal drawing stood out below the nipples, more smudged and faded since last night. Linsky obliterated it
further. Pressing with one hand against the sternum, he began the thoraco-abdominal incision. First the long shallow curve
through the pectorals from one shoulder blade to the other. Then the straight deep line from breastbone to
pubis. With the Y-shaped cut gaping open, Linsky peeled back flesh and cartilage from the rib cage, then crunched with the
cutters through the breastbone to the pale milky sac veiling the organs. Standing behind the medical examiner, Sakura could
identify the lungs and liver above the snaky loops of intestine. With the layers coming away, it was easier again to think
of Milne as just a body. The smell resisted abstraction.


The process continued. Linsky removed the organ tree, transferring it to a metal sink. He proceeded to extract his samples,
inspecting and weighing the organs. Sakura thought the medical examiner looked no more satisfied than he had at Carrera’s
autopsy. He waited for a moment when the M.E. ceased speaking for the mike.


“You still don’t know how they died, do you?” he said.

Linsky turned to him. “No, Lieutenant Sakura, I do not. The needle marks on the arms are suggestive, but on Saturday, when
I opened Carrera, I found no damage to the organs. And the basic toxicological screens turned up nothing beyond a common pain
medication, an anti-inflammatory, and an antidepressant.”


“And Milne …?”

“The organs, as you’ve heard me say, appear normal.”

“You said the needle marks were suggestive—”

Linsky cut off the implied question with a look. “It is my intention,” he said, “to push through a much wider range of tests
on blood and tissue samples from both victims.”


“When?” Sakura asked.

“As soon as possible, Lieutenant. I don’t like mysteries any better than you do.”



In Kyoto the Japanese instinct for elegance and restraint had been tempered by the realities of day-to-day living in the simple
home of Hanae’s parents. The cages of their daughter’s finches had shared space with the family, bedding and clothing stored
beneath the raised tatami floor, a large tansu holding most of the family’s smaller treasures. Rooms were created with screens that could easily be moved. And though Hanae’s
marriage had taken her from one crowded island to another,
James Sakura had made a promise not to deny his wife when she’d asked to bring her birds.


Since he had come home, Sakura had spoken little more than a dozen words to Hanae; they had not touched. The touching would
come later when they drew back the tsutsugaki, the quilt cover that was a wedding gift from Hanae’s parents, and lay together for the night. For now, he was taking immense
pleasure in sitting on the tatami rug of their living room and watching his wife move from one cage to another. When he was working on a major case, the birds,
as well as Taiko her dog, kept as irregular hours as he and Hanae.


She reached and closed the last of the cages that held her beloved finches. He watched her place a seed in her mouth and move
her face against the metal cage. Tee-tee-tee. She made a kind of trumpeting sound, and the dominant bird came closer to pluck the seed from between her teeth. Then she
walked over to a worktable and removed a cloth shrouding a mass of clay.


At first her fingers moved lightly over the surface of the bulky shape. Then they constricted, working the mass deliberately.
The arms that slipped from her kimono sleeves appeared startlingly naked, and Sakura thought that the flat of his wife’s hands
seemed too plump and childish for her slim delicate fingers.


“You and Taiko should find other work,” she said without turning.

“We enjoy watching you.” He reached to scratch behind the dog’s ears.

“And what do you see?”

“That your fingers are too long for your hands.”

“And …?” She turned then, fixing him with her sightless eyes.

“That my wife is naked beneath her kimono.”

“Japanese men do not lust after their wives.”

“I’m American.”

At this Hanae laughed. “You are right. Sometimes I think that except for your thin face and lidless eyes, there is little
of your Japanese ancestors in you.” She returned to her modeling, the light from the chochin reflecting in the blackness of her hair.


“Did you go to art class this afternoon?”

“Yes, I’m still working on the birds. Ms. Nguyen is a very patient teacher.”


“What is this you’re sculpting?”


“I am not sure. My hands will tell me when they are ready.”

He knew it was a lie. The bust was going to be a surprise for Christmas. He could recognize his features already forming in
the crude mass.


She moved her fingers deeper into the moist clay. “Vicky called today.”

“And how do they like Minneapolis?”

“She said it is not Manhattan.”

“Not a very good review,” he said. “You’re going to miss her, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “I’ve never had a friend like Victoria.”

“You’ll find someone else.”

She shrugged. “I have a lot to keep me busy.”

“I can see that.” He stood and walked behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders, his thumbs finding the nape of her neck.
“It looks like a head.”


“It will be.” She let her hands fall into her lap. “How is your investigation going?”

Despite his efforts, she had sensed his mood. “This appears to be a serial case,” he answered. “They are always difficult.”

She dipped her hands in the bowl of water, then wiped them with the towel. “Have you spoken to Kenjin?” She turned her face
up to him.


The question had surprised him. A moment passed when even his breath was silent. “No,” he said. “I haven’t talked to Michael
for a while.”


“I think this time you may need him.”

“He won’t come back, Hanae.”

“But it is not impossible?”

“Michael was cleared of any wrongdoing. It was his decision to resign.”

She pulled him down to her, taking his face in her hands. “Tell me about that night.”

He had no wish to reopen the wounds that had scarred, if not healed, in the time that had passed. But his wife’s instincts
were a deep, slow-stirring sea. He did not question the tides that moved her.



“A suspect was killed,” he said to her.


“This much I know, Jimmy.” She waited.

“The suspect didn’t have a weapon,” he said finally.

She sighed, as if the knowledge were a release. “But Kenjin shot him.”

“Michael thought the man was firing at us,” he explained. “He believed he saw a powder flash.”

“What happened?”

“Backup arrived. Barney Edleman saw right away we had a bad shooting. He pulled out a drop piece he had under the seat of
the patrol car.”


“A drop piece?”

“A gun that couldn’t be traced. Michael said no. But Edleman said he was crazy, throwing away his career for someone like
Robby Hudson.”


“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I watched Edleman wrap Hudson’s hand around the grip, then wipe his own prints off the barrel before he tossed it
in some trash. The report read that the weapon was found in the search, that the suspect must have dropped it as he fell.”


“Kenjin allowed this?”

“I was the officer of record. It was my name on the report.”

The pressure of her fingers softened on his cheeks. “And Kenjin resigned.”

He shook his head. “It was a couple months later that the offer came for me to attend the program at Quantico. That was when
Michael resigned.”


“Because you accepted?”

“Because Michael was afraid I wouldn’t. I had lied to keep him on the force. He would never resign as long as I was there.
And he knew I understood that.”


Her hands still cupped his face. He reached for them, took them into his. “Michael changed after the shooting, Hanae. He didn’t
trust himself. He was trying to regain his balance.”


“He was depending on you.”

“Yes. But I failed him. My lie betrayed him more than the truth.”

“The guilt you feel is foolish, my husband. As is your anger. You chose once for Kenjin. In the end he chose for himself.”


“I didn’t like what I did. I still don’t. But Michael was a good detective. He should have remained on the force.”


“Your faith in him was greater than his own. But time has passed,” she said. “Will you ask him to return?”

His wife’s commands, ever gentle, rested in the guise of questions.



Father Andrew Kellog measured an extra finger of bourbon into his glass and walked to the parlor window that gave a view to
the street. He had thought he’d heard Father Graff’s Jeep, but pulling back the curtain, he could see nothing outside but
the dark and silent patch of failing neighborhood. The black pane of glass breathed coldness, and he stepped back, pulling
the robe tighter around him in the under-heated room. The living quarters at St. Sebastian were as old and unre-modeled as